Popular Writing

On the topic of “what I have been reading” …

The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb: Tyler Cowen was reserved in his judgment. Beyond the first few pages, I came to hate this book. The whole idea was that there were some events that were hard to predict. OK. But Taleb’s prescription seemed to just give up or at the very least ignore people who try to sort out the world by treating events as somewhat predictable. In the end, it became predictably annoying.

More Sex is Safer Sex by Steven Landsburg: this was an enjoyable, if shameless entrepreneurial, attempt to popularise economics. I agree with Greg Mankiw that it is underweight to be as bigger seller as Freakonomics but is still worth the read.

Walt Disney by Neal Gabler: this is a long but interesting biography of Disney. The main interest to me was its exposition of the creative and innovative process as well as the ins and outs of negotiating with firms that have market power. And, no, it wasn’t Disney with the market power in most of the book but he learnt from his business ‘partners’ its importance and how to use it.

These days I have been doing more writing than reading. By the way, if anyone has a good non-academic publishing contact, please let me know. That industry is a mystery to me.